Learn Lacan
Canonical general 76 occurrences

Little Other

ELI5

The "little other" is simply another person like you — your mirror image, your rival, the face you see looking back at you — as opposed to the "big Other," which is the whole invisible system of language and social rules that structures how you think and speak.

Definition

The "little other" (petit autre, abbreviated a or o) is Lacan's term for the imaginary counterpart — the specular double, the fellow human being, the alter-ego with whom the subject stands in a mirror relation. It is the pole constituted through the mirror stage: a figure who is structurally homogeneous with the ego, essentially "another me," the locus of both identification and rivalry. In the L-schema, the little other occupies the imaginary axis (a–a′), running between the analysand's ego and the analyst's ego as alter-ego. This imaginary dyad is characterized by the logic of same/different — producing love through identification and hate through rivalry — and is fundamentally a relation of misrecognition (méconnaissance), since what one loves in the other is ultimately one's own reflected image. Crucially, the little other belongs to the Imaginary register and must be distinguished from the big Other (grand Autre, A), which names the symbolic order, the locus of language, the treasury of signifiers, and the unconscious as the "discourse of the Other." The little other is the object about which one speaks; the big Other is the locus to which speech is addressed.

Beyond its role as specular double, the little other also designates the concrete fellow human being (Nebenmensch) whose opacity — what Freud called das Ding — makes it a site of quasi-traumatic encounter that founds subjectivity itself. The encounter with the little other is not merely a pleasant mirroring: at its core it harbours an unrepresentable excess (the unknowable desire of the Other) that makes the little other uncanny and anxiety-generating. In clinical terms, neurosis can be understood as an impasse constituted entirely within the imaginary register — between little others — while psychosis involves the foreclosure of the big Other, which then causes the little other (imaginary double) to proliferate as hallucinatory voice or delusional persecutor. Properly analytic work requires the analyst to avoid settling into the position of the little other (imaginary ego-to-ego communication) and instead to intervene at the level of the symbolic, big Other.

Evolution

In Lacan's early "return to Freud" seminars (Seminars 1–4, roughly the 1950s), the little other is theorized primarily through the mirror stage and the L-schema. In Seminar 1, the relation of the ego to the "fellow being in relation to whom he is initially formed" is already flagged as "an essential structure of the human constitution," and in Seminar 2 the formal contrast is introduced between the specular a (little other as ego's imaginary counterpart) and the capital-A Other across the "wall of language." In Seminars 3 and 4, the distinction is mobilized clinically: in psychosis the big Other is foreclosed and the little other takes over as the delusional double; in neurosis the subject is imprisoned in imaginary dyadic impasses "between little others." In Seminar 4, Lacan explicitly signals a shift: the little other as imaginary screen between subject and big Other is acknowledged as a starting-point his teaching is now moving beyond, toward the structure of discourse and the signifier.

In the middle seminars (Seminars 5–8, structuralist-ethics period), the little other is increasingly situated within the Graph of Desire and the topological schemas. Seminar 5 uses the little other to specify the imaginary axis in jokes (the small other contributes the resistance against which the joke resonates toward the big Other), in the obsessional's structure (where the "real" semblable is irrelevant because the obsessional stages his exploit before the big Other), and in Dora's hysteria (where Herr K. occupies the position of the little other as imaginary support of identification). Seminar 7 identifies the little other explicitly as "the imaginary function," the fellow man of the mirror stage, who also functions as the agent of deprivation in the dialectic of the good. Seminar 8 situates the little other in the bridge-game analogy: the analyst as mort occupies the lower-o position and must cancel out his ego (little-other function) so that the symbolic Other can operate.

In Seminar 10 (object-a period), the little other is integrated into the topology of anxiety: the subject is linked to the human Other by its quality of being a semblable, so that what remains of anxiety's "I don't know what object I am" is, fundamentally, misrecognition — the scopic level being the one at which objet a is most fully masked. In Seminar 16, the very title "From an Other to the other" stages the trajectory of the seminar as a movement from the big Other toward the little other, now identified with the objet petit a — a development in which the lower-case other comes to designate not merely the specular double but the residual, non-symbolizable remainder.

Secondary literature broadly confirms and extends this trajectory. Fink (the-lacanian-subject) tracks the shift from little other as imaginary ego to the later real objet a. Boothby (diaeresis; richard-boothby-freud-as-philosopher) uses the little other as the Nebenmensch, insisting on its quasi-traumatic, abyssal character and its structural connection to das Ding. McGowan (capitalism-and-desire) applies the formula — love demands the little other take over the function of the big Other — to a political economy of love versus capitalist romance. Zupančič (alenka-zupancic-ethics-of-the-real; the-odd-one-in) deploys the distinction to analyze the superego path and comic structure respectively.

Key formulations

Seminar I · Freud's Papers on TechniqueJacques Lacan · 1953 (p.58)

The relation of the ego to the other, the relation of the subject to this other himself, to this fellow being in relation to whom he is initially formed, is an essential structure of the human constitution.

This is Lacan's foundational statement linking the little other (fellow being, semblable) to the constitutive structure of the ego and thus to the very possibility of imaginary relations.

Seminar III · The PsychosesJacques Lacan · 1955 (p.265)

The former, the other with a small o, is the imaginary other, the otherness in a mirror image, which makes us dependent upon the form of our counterpart.

This is Lacan's clearest explicit definition of the little other as imaginary mirror-counterpart, set directly against the absolute Other — the locus of speech — and presented as the thread running through the entire analytic situation.

The Triumph of ReligionJacques Lacan · 2013 (p.40)

I merely love an other, an other [autre] with a lowercase initial o, hence my students' use of the term 'little other.'

Lacan himself provides the genealogy of his students' term while defining the little other as the specular image that is the object of narcissistic love — the one the subject loves instead of itself.

Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the SacredRichard Boothby · 2023 (p.34)

The little other is the locus of a disturbing mystery. Lacan's thesis is that the foundation of subjectivity is established in a complicated reaction to a quasi-traumatic encounter with the little other.

Boothby radicalized the concept beyond simple mirror reflection: the little other is the site of a quasi-traumatic founding encounter, before the argument pivots to das Ding as the unrepresentable core of that alterity.

Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (alt. ed.)Todd McGowan · 2016 (p.190)

To put it in the terms of psychoanalysis, love demands that the little other take over the function of the big Other.

McGowan's formulation captures the structural inversion that love performs — displacing the symbolic anchor (big Other) with the singular beloved (little other) — and grounds a critique of capitalism's domestication of love.

Cited examples

The hallucinatory utterance 'Sow!' in the case of the two women patients (paranoia) (case_study)

Cited by Seminar III · The PsychosesJacques Lacan · 1955 (p.65). Lacan uses the paranoid patient's hallucinatory insult to show that in psychosis the big Other is structurally excluded, so the subject's own message circulates between two little others (ego and mirror-counterpart) without ever reaching the dimension of true speech. The little other functions as the specular mirror-counterpart in whom the subject's message resonates back, rather than being received and inverted by a genuine symbolic Other.

The Dora case — Herr K. as Dora's imaginary other (little a) (case_study)

Cited by Seminar V · Formations of the UnconsciousJacques Lacan · 1957 (p.352). Lacan reads Herr K. as occupying the position of the little other for Dora: the imaginary other in whom she recognizes herself and who supports her identification. When this imaginary relation collapses, the aggressive fury characteristic of the dual imaginary relation is unleashed, illustrating how the little other functions as the support of hysterical identification distinct from the big Other of desire.

The case of the young homosexual woman and Freud's termination of her treatment (passage à l'acte) (case_study)

Cited by Seminar X · AnxietyJacques Lacan · 1962 (p.121). Lacan uses this case to show that in hypnosis the subject can read everything specular in the mirror of the Other — everything that stands at the level of the little other — but precisely cannot see objet a (the cause behind hypnosis). The case illustrates the structural invisibility of the cause-object within the imaginary register.

Aronofsky's film π (Pi) (film)

Cited by Lacan and Contemporary FilmTodd McGowan & Sheila Kunkle (eds.) · 2004 (page unknown). In the psychotic universe staged by π, all the (little o) others Max encounters are adversarial, invasive, and violent — direct bearers of threatening jouissance. Without the symbolic mediation of the big Other (Name-of-the-Father), the little others cannot be held at a safe imaginary distance but become carriers of the Real, illustrating how psychosis collapses the distinction between imaginary other and overwhelming jouissance.

Leonardo da Vinci's mirror writing (from Freud/Lacan's reading of Leonardo) (art)

Cited by Seminar IV · The Object RelationJacques Lacan · 1956 (p.426). Lacan reads Leonardo's habit of writing from right to left as the symptom of a fundamental subjective inversion in which Leonardo addresses himself from the position of his own imaginary other. This illustrates the broader thesis that sublimation produces a de-subjectification correlated with an inversion of the ego/other relation in the imaginary register.

Tensions

Within the corpus

Whether the little other is primarily a simple specular mirror image (imaginary counterpart, ego-double) or whether it harbours a quasi-traumatic, abyssal dimension (das Ding) that exceeds the specular.

  • Lacan (Seminar 3) defines the little other strictly as the imaginary mirror-other, 'the otherness in a mirror image, which makes us dependent upon the form of our counterpart' — a functional contrast to the absolute Other of speech, with no special traumatic depth assigned to the little other as such. — cite: jacques-lacan-seminar-3 p.265

  • Boothby (Embracing the Void) argues that the little other is 'the locus of a disturbing mystery' and that 'the foundation of subjectivity is established in a complicated reaction to a quasi-traumatic encounter with the little other,' explicitly linking the little other to das Ding and to an abyss that everyday imaginary relations function to conceal. — cite: diaeresis-richard-boothby-embracing-the-void-rethinking-the-origin-of-the-sacred p.34

    This tension turns on whether the little other's uncanniness is intrinsic (Boothby) or borrowed from the big Other/das Ding that subtends it (Lacan's own seminars), with significant consequences for how the encounter with others in clinical and religious contexts is theorized.

Whether the analyst's proper position is to cancel out the little-other (ego) function entirely, or whether the little other retains a specific positive structural role in analytic work.

  • The commentary on 'The Freudian Thing' (hook-calum-neill-stijn-vanheule, Reading Lacan's Écrits) holds that the analyst must avoid placing himself at o (small other/ego level) and must intervene at the symbolic register; the imaginary axis is a site of resistance that must be traversed rather than inhabited. — cite: derek-hook-calum-neill-stijn-vanheule-reading-lacan-s-ecrits-from-the-freudian-t p.225

  • Žižek (Less Than Nothing) describes a two-stage analytic movement in which the analyst first acts as stand-in for the big Other, and then shifts to the position of 'small other' — the obstacle embodying the inconsistency of the big Other — as a more advanced, de-subjectivizing function that produces subjective destitution. — cite: slavoj-zizek-less-than-nothing-hegel-and-the-shadow-of-dialectical-materialism-v

    For the Écrits commentary, the little-other position is simply an error of technique to be avoided; for Žižek, occupying it constitutes an advanced analytic manoeuvre, representing a genuine disagreement about the analyst's proper structural place.

Across frameworks

vs Ego Psychology

Lacanian: For Lacan, the little other is the imaginary alter-ego whose dyadic mirroring constitutes the ego as a site of misrecognition and resistance. Privileging the imaginary relation between egos — as ego psychology does when it sets the analyst's ego as a 'gold standard' for the analysand to identify with — reduces analysis to normative indoctrination. The analytic aim is not a stronger ego or better adaptation but traversal of the imaginary axis toward the symbolic Other.

Ego Psychology: Ego psychology (Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein) conceives the analyst as a real object with whom the patient forms a therapeutic alliance through the 'conflict-free' parts of both egos. The relationship with the analyst is a corrective, adaptive encounter; the analytic work proceeds by strengthening the reality-testing and synthetic functions of the ego, using identification with the analyst as a therapeutic lever rather than an obstacle.

Fault line: The core disagreement is whether imaginary identification with a real other (little other) is a therapeutic resource or a structural obstacle: ego psychology treats it as the vehicle of cure; Lacan treats it as the prison of neurosis.

vs Object Oriented Ontology

Lacanian: The little other in Lacanian theory is constitutively relational and imaginary: it exists only as a projection of the ego's specular image and has no depth or interiority independent of the dyadic relation. What appears as the other's unknowable core is not a self-sufficient withdrawn object but the structural effect of the big Other's desire — das Ding — which is a product of the subject's encounter with language, not an intrinsic property of objects.

Object Oriented Ontology: Object-Oriented Ontology (Harman, Morton) insists that every object — including other persons — withdraws from all relations, including perception and cognition. The other's opacity or inexhaustibility is not a structural effect of language or subjectivity but an ontological feature of objects as such; all relations translate or distort rather than directly access objects. The little other's mystery would be grounded in irreducible object-withdrawal, not in the symbolic order.

Fault line: OOO locates the other's opacity in the autonomous withdrawal of objects from all relational access; Lacan locates it in the structural effects of language and the big Other. For Lacan, 'the other' as such is a relational-imaginary construct; for OOO, objects precede and exceed all relations including imaginary ones.

vs Humanistic Self Actualization

Lacanian: In Lacanian theory, the imaginary relation with the little other is precisely the register of alienation: loving or aspiring to be like the other (mirror identification) traps the subject in misrecognition, not self-actualization. The subject cannot find its authentic desire in the relation with a semblable but must traverse the imaginary to access the desire of the Other — a process that is constitutively unsatisfying and cannot converge on a fulfilled, integrated self.

Humanistic Self Actualization: Humanistic psychology (Rogers, Maslow) treats the relationship with others as potentially facilitating authentic growth and self-actualization. The empathic, unconditional positive regard offered by the other (therapist or friend) mirrors the subject's authentic potentials back to it, enabling the true self to unfold. Relations with others are, at their best, growth-promoting encounters that increase self-congruence rather than sites of misrecognition.

Fault line: Where humanistic psychology treats the mirroring relationship with the other as a vehicle for authentic selfhood, Lacan treats the very same mirroring relation — the imaginary dyad with the little other — as the structural source of alienation and the barrier to desire. There is no 'true self' to be reflected back, only the metonymic slide of desire along the signifying chain.

All occurrences

Where it appears in the corpus (71)

  1. #01

    Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan · Alenka Zupančič · p.178

    Between the Moral Law and the Superego > The status of the law

    Theoretical move: The moral law in Kant has the structure of an enunciation without a statement—a "half-said"—and is constituted retroactively by the subject's act rather than pre-existing it; this convergence with Lacan's account of desire as the desire of the Other allows Zupančič to distinguish two ethical paths: the superego's pursuit of an Other that knows, versus the act that creates what the Law wants.

    One could say that this subject aims at elevating some small other to the rank of the (big) Other.

  2. #02

    Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets · Todd McGowan · p.203

    THE TR IP BE YOND NARC I SSI SM

    Theoretical move: Love is theorized as exceeding both narcissism and desire by enacting a traumatic encounter with the other's irreducible singularity, and this disruptive structure is then contrasted with capitalist "romance," which domesticates love into an investment fantasy organized around the ideology of the soul mate as perfect commodity.

    love demands that the little other take over the function of the big Other.

  3. #03

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.38

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > The other’s discourse

    Theoretical move: Lacan's critique of ego psychology is mobilized to demonstrate that the ego is structurally an alienating sedimentation of the other's discourse and a device of resistance against the unconscious, such that the proper analytic use of the ego is as a *via negativa* — a negative index pointing toward the speaking subject of the unconscious rather than a therapeutic ideal to be strengthened.

    the Imaginary–Symbolic reality represented by the subject's little-o others (i.e., alter-egos, such as parents qua first important conspecifics)

  4. #04

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > Abstract

    Theoretical move: Against the imaginary reduction of psychoanalysis to ego-psychology, this passage argues that the unconscious must be understood as the locus of the Other's speech, structured by signifiers via metaphor and metonymy, with the death drive as the key to repetitive speech—and that analytic training requires restoring the symbolic chain rather than reducing analysis to an imaginary dyad.

    Lacan distinguishes it from the 'other,' the ego's imaginary partner and projection, its mirror image in the face of the other person, its object of identification or rivalry

  5. #05

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [Psychoanalysis and its Teaching](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-004) > The imaginary in neurosis and object relations

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that neurotic impasses (hysterical and obsessional) are constituted entirely within the imaginary register—between little others and ego-images—and therefore cannot be resolved from within that register; the hysteric perpetuates an alienated desire mediated through the other's image while the obsessive deploys his ego as a puppet to stave off death, both strategies ultimately annulling desire and blocking genuine subjective engagement.

    They are impasses because they are constituted in the imaginary register (between 'little others').

  6. #06

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.) · p.225

    [The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-008) > III. Where do we stand regarding transference?

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the "central defect" of post-Freudian theories of transference (genetic/ego-psychological, object-relational, and intersubjective-introjective) is their reduction of the analytic situation to a dual, imaginary relationship, thereby neglecting the symbolic order and the constitutive impasse of desire; against these, Lacan insists that the direction of treatment must be oriented by the patient's signifiers rather than any normalizing ideal of adaptation or harmonious object-love.

    the analyst should not be tempted to situate himself in o (small other), at the level of his ego, but to intervene in the symbolic register

  7. #07

    Reading Lacan's Écrits: From 'The Freudian Thing' to 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' · Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule (eds.)

    [The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis](#ch05.xhtml_tocbook-part-003) > Analytic action

    Theoretical move: The L-schema is deployed to argue that the fundamental axis of analytic action is the Symbolic (between unconscious subjects), not the Imaginary (between egos), and that the analyst's strategic self-effacement/silence opens space for the unconscious to speak by dissolving the transference and instantiating the symbolic order as condition of possibility for the analysand's speech.

    'a′ other' (i.e., the analyst's ego as the Imaginary little-o other alter-ego to the analysand's ego)

  8. #08

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.17

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?)

    Theoretical move: The passage sets up a programmatic theoretical agenda: to ground a Lacanian account of religion by first rigorously mapping the relationship between the big Other, the little other, and Lacan's triadic categories (imaginary, symbolic, real) — a relationship the author claims commentators typically take for granted.

    the relationship between the little other of the fellow human being and the 'big Other' of the symbolic code

  9. #09

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.32

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?) > Worshipful Obsession, Obsessional Worship > Rethinking Religion

    Theoretical move: Boothby argues that Lacan, despite offering no explicit theory of religion, provides uniquely suited resources for interpreting worship; the passage surveys two dominant approaches—identifying God with the Real or with the Symbolic—before proposing that the key to a Lacanian theory of religion lies in the relationship between the big Other and the little other.

    What relation obtains between Lacan's notion of the symbolic big Other and the 'little other,' the actually existing individual who stands before me?

  10. #10

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.33

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?) > The Abyss of the Other

    Theoretical move: The passage sets up the theoretical problem of the intersection between the big Other (symbolic structures enabling exchange) and the little other (the fellow human being), arguing against the commonsense dismissal of the little other as trivial, and anchoring the distinction in Lacan's reading of *Das Ding* as an exterior, primordial alterity.

    on the other, the fellow human being, the unique individual with whom we speak.

  11. #11

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.34

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?) > The Abyss of the Other > In the Shadow of the Thing

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that *das Ding* — the Thing — is not primarily a Kantian noumenal kernel of objects but the inaccessible, anxiety-generating core of the mother's desire encountered in the primordial relation with the fellow human being, making the (m)Other's unknown desire the constitutive ground of subjectivity and the original template for all subsequent object-relations.

    The little other is the locus of a disturbing mystery. Lacan's thesis is that the foundation of subjectivity is established in a complicated reaction to a quasi-traumatic encounter with the little other.

  12. #12

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?) > The *Ex Nihilo* of the Signifier

    Theoretical move: By centering the primal challenge on the mother's desire rather than the Oedipus complex, Lacan's concept of das Ding radicalizes Freud's triangular structure of subjectivity, reframing the relation between the little other and the big Other as the organizing problem of subject-constitution.

    We need to pose the question once again: What exactly is the relation between the little and the big Other?

  13. #13

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.60

    Rereading Lacan (or, What Is the Other?) > The Disappearing Thing > The Thing about a Psychoanalyst

    Theoretical move: The analyst embodies both the little Other (das Ding) and the big Other (subject supposed to know) at different levels of the analytic encounter; the progress of analysis moves from the patient's identification of the analyst with the symbolic big Other toward the dissolution of that Other, ultimately returning the subject to the pre-symbolic abyss of das Ding as the core of the unconscious.

    what the analyst embodies is not the enigma of the little Other, but the big Other of the symbolic code

  14. #14

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.133

    Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > Laws of the Neighbor

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the Decalogue's two tablets both address the subject's constitutive bondage to das Ding—first through the logic of the unnameable Other (Yahweh/signifier) and then through the neighbor-as-Thing—such that the final two commandments (against lying and coveting) crystallize an unavoidable double bind: every enunciation of truth about the Thing is already a lie, and every prohibition of desire is what constitutes and inflames that desire.

    first in relation to the words spoken by the (big) Other and second in relation to the respect that must be shown to the (little) Other.

  15. #15

    Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred · Richard Boothby · p.247

    Rethinking Religion (or, What Is the Sacred?) > Index > **INDEX**

    Theoretical move: This is a book index (pages 244–247) listing conceptual terms, proper names, and their page references; it is non-substantive as a theoretical passage but reveals the conceptual architecture of Boothby's text by mapping Lacanian concepts (das Ding, objet a, jouissance, sujet supposé savoir, sexuation, etc.) onto comparative religion.

    little other: and big Other, 7, 47, 51, 124, 129, 151; individual as, 22, 23; symbolic, 120

  16. #16

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_87"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0105"></span>***I*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_90"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0108"></span>**imaginary**

    Theoretical move: The Imaginary order is defined not as mere illusion but as a structurally necessary, symbolically conditioned register whose basis is the mirror-stage ego-formation; the passage argues that reducing psychoanalysis to the imaginary (identification with the analyst, dual relationship) betrays the symbolic essence of analytic work, and that the only therapeutic purchase on the imaginary comes through its translation into the symbolic.

    This relationship whereby the ego is constituted by identification with the little other means that the ego, and the imaginary order itself, are both sites of a radical ALIENATION

  17. #17

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_173"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_page_0195"></span>***S*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part29.xhtml_ncx_191"></span>**specular image**

    Theoretical move: The specular image is theorized as the founding mechanism of ego-formation in the mirror stage, while simultaneously marking out a class of non-specularizable objects (phallus, erogenous zones, objet petit a) that structurally escape the imaginary register.

    the image of oneself which is simultaneously oneself and OTHER (the 'little other')

  18. #18

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_134"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_page_0151"></span>***O*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part25.xhtml_ncx_141"></span>**other/Other**

    Theoretical move: The passage establishes the fundamental Lacanian distinction between the little other (imaginary counterpart/ego-reflection) and the big Other (symbolic order, radical alterity, locus of speech), arguing that the big Other as symbolic order is primary over the big Other as subject, and that the unconscious is the discourse of the Other.

    The little other is the other who is not really other, but a reflection and projection of the EGO... He is simultaneously the COUNTERPART and the SPECULAR IMAGE. The little other is thus entirely inscribed in the imaginary order.

  19. #19

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_87"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_page_0105"></span>***I*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part19.xhtml_ncx_98"></span>**inversion**

    Theoretical move: The passage traces Lacan's concept of 'inversion' from Freud's designation of homosexuality through to its properly Lacanian sense as a structural property of the specular image and imaginary phenomena, culminating in the claim that analytic communication is defined by the sender receiving his own message in inverted form — and that both senses are unified in Lacan's reading of Leonardo da Vinci via Schema L.

    an inversion of the positions (on schema L) of the ego and the little other

  20. #20

    An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis · Dylan Evans

    <span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_ncx_30"></span><span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_page_0045"></span>***C*** > <span id="9781134780112_Part13.xhtml_ncx_41"></span>**Counterpart**

    Theoretical move: The counterpart (semblable) is theorized as the 'little other' of the Imaginary register—the other who is not radically Other but merely similar to the ego—thus grounding the formation of the ego in identificatory mirroring and distinguishing imaginary alterity from symbolic alterity.

    reserving the latter term for the counterpart and/or specular image. The counterpart is the little other because it is not truly other at all

  21. #21

    Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.58

    **V**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the ego's fundamental function is misrecognition (*méconnaissance*), not synthetic mastery, and that the symbolic system—marked by linguistic criss-crossing (*Verschlungenheit*)—infinitely exceeds any intentional control the ego might exercise over speech; this reorients the analytic experience toward speech and the Other rather than ego-psychology's adaptive model, framing Freud's *Verneinung* as the key text for rethinking judgement and negation beyond positive psychology.

    The relation of the ego to the other, the relation of the subject to this other himself, to this fellow being in relation to whom he is initially formed, is an essential structure of the human constitution.

  22. #22

    Seminar I · Freud's Papers on Technique · Jacques Lacan · p.170

    **Xffl**

    Theoretical move: Lacan distinguishes méconnaissance (misrecognition) from simple ignorance by arguing that misrecognition presupposes a correlative knowledge behind it, and uses this distinction to pivot from ego-psychology's conception of the ego as a synthesising function toward a Lacanian account of the ego as fundamentally imaginary and constituted through the specular/linguistic relation to the other.

    the I has above all a psychological reference… I is a verbal term, whose use is learned through a specific reference to the other, which is a spoken reference.

  23. #23

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.121

    BookX Anxiety > **VIII**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the *passage à l'acte* is constituted by the subject's absolute identification with *objet a* — her reduction to and ejection from the scene as that object — and that this structural logic, rather than tactlessness or countertransference, explains why Freud himself enacts a *dropping* (passage à l'acte in reverse) when he terminates the treatment of the young homosexual woman. The topology of *a* in the mirror of the Other is shown to illuminate both hypnosis and obsessional doubt as different modalities of the object's structural invisibility to the subject.

    the place specific to a in the mirror of the Other

  24. #24

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.340

    **xx** > **FROM THE** *a* **TO THE NAMES-OF-THE-FATHER**

    Theoretical move: Lacan concludes his seminar on anxiety by arguing that anxiety is a signal prior to the cession of object *a*, that the scopic level most fully masks *a* and thus most assures the subject against anxiety, and that birth trauma (understood as intrusion of a radically Other environment rather than separation from the mother) and the oral/anal stages of object constitution reveal how desire is fundamentally structured around the yielding of *a* in relation to the demand of the Other — a structure irreducible to Hegelian dialectics.

    the subject ultimately finds himself entirely at the mercy of the other, here in the dyadic sense of the little other.

  25. #25

    Seminar X · Anxiety · Jacques Lacan · p.41

    BookX Anxiety > **FROM THE COSMOS TO THE** *UNHEIMLICHE*

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the hiatus between the mirror stage (specular/imaginary) and the signifier (symbolic) is not a temporal discontinuity in his teaching but a structural articulation, where the specular image is always-already dependent on ratification by the big Other; he further stages this through a three-phase cosmology (world → stage → world-laden-by-stage) to distinguish Lévi-Straussian analytic reason from psychoanalytic reason grounded in the primacy of the signifier over any homogeneous materialism.

    the connection between the subject and the little other and the connection between the subject and the big Other don't live separate lives

  26. #26

    Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.3

    **Seminar 1: Wednesday 13 November 1968**

    Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar XVI by arguing that psychoanalytic theory is constitutively 'a discourse without words' — that is, grounded not in phenomenological sense but in the cause-structure of the unconscious — and uses this to distinguish psychoanalytic discourse from both philosophy and structuralism as a worldview, while announcing that the seminar will develop the function of the objet petit a through a homology with Marx's analysis of the labour market.

    I chose the title From an Other to the other (D'un Autre à l'autre) to indicate the major reference points around which my discourse ought, properly speaking, to turn.

  27. #27

    Seminar XVI · From an Other to the other · Jacques Lacan · p.147

    Seminar 12: Wednesday 26 February 1969

    Theoretical move: Lacan retroactively illuminates the trajectory of Seminar VII (Ethics of Psychoanalysis) from his 1969 vantage point, arguing that the Freud event grounds ethics in the Real—approached through the conjoint Symbolic/Imaginary—and that "truth has the structure of fiction" (via Bentham's theory of fictions) is the essential starting point for any psychoanalytic ethics, correlating the pleasure principle with the function of the unconscious.

    From an Other to the other, under which my discourse for this year is presented.

  28. #28

    Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.189

    B EYOND THE IMA GINARY , THE SYMBOLIC , OR FROM TH E LITTLE TO TH E BIG OTH ER > Odd or even? Beyond intersubjectivity

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the game of even and odd—first analysed through imaginary intersubjectivity (ego-mirroring, temporal oscillation between first, second, third positions) and then through the confrontation with the machine—to demonstrate that the symbolic order, not imaginary identification, is the proper ground for logical reasoning; the machine forces a passage from imaginary intersubjectivity to the combinatory of language, and the detour through Freud's random number shows that the unconscious is itself a symbolic machine where chance does not exist.

    the subject has to know that he is faced with another subject, in principle homogeneous with him... the alter ego and the ego

  29. #29

    Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.252

    XVIII > Introduction of the big Other

    Theoretical move: Lacan introduces the schema of the "wall of language" separating the subject (S) from the true big Other (A), distinguishing the imaginary plane of ego/specular other (a/a') from the symbolic plane, and arguing that the Other's capacity to lie—not merely to answer—constitutes the decisive proof of authentic intersubjectivity; this schema also serves as a critique of ego-psychology's imaginary reduction of analytic aims.

    it perceives what we call, for structural reasons, its fellow being, in the form of the specular other. This form of the other has a very close relation to the ego, which can be superimposed on it, and we write it as a.

  30. #30

    Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.185

    B EYOND THE IMA GINARY , THE SYMBOLIC , OR FROM TH E LITTLE TO TH E BIG OTH ER > Odd or even? Beyond intersubjectivity

    Theoretical move: Lacan locates an "ultimate quod" — a confrontation of the subject with the real beyond both imaginary and symbolic mediation — in privileged dream experiences (Irma, Wolfman), then uses Poe's "even and odd" game to introduce the cybernetic/intersubjective problem of identification with the Other's reasoning, staging the question of what kind of subject operates beyond the ego.

    The subject passes beyond this glass in which he always sees, entangled, his own image.

  31. #31

    Seminar II · The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.100

    VI > VII

    Theoretical move: Lacan grounds Freudian repetition compulsion not in biology but in the symbolic register: repetition is the form taken by the human subject's integration into a circular chain of discourse (the unconscious as the discourse of the Other), illustrated through the cybernetic model of a message looping through a circuit, which supersedes the dyadic/imaginary model of reminiscence Lacan associates with Platonic thought.

    This discourse of the other is not the discourse of the abstract other, of the other in the dyad, of my correspondent, nor even of my slave

  32. #32

    Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.54

    **II** > **Ill** > **1**

    Theoretical move: Lacan reworks Freud's grammatical analysis of paranoia by mapping each mode of negation of "I love him" onto a distinct structure of alienation (inverted, diverted, converted), while grounding the whole in the distinction between the big Other (symbolic, unknown) and the little other (imaginary, rival ego), arguing that psychosis must be understood through the structure of the subject's relation to an Other that speaks to him.

    the other with a small o, that is, the other who is me, the source of all knowledge, is fundamental.

  33. #33

    Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.265

    **XX**

    Theoretical move: By distinguishing the little other (imaginary) from the absolute Other (symbolic/linguistic), and drawing an analogy between medieval ecstatic love theory and psychotic structure, Lacan argues that psychosis is constituted by an inability to respond to the interpellation of the Other, producing a love relation that abolishes the subject and reduces the Other to a pure signifier emptied of meaning.

    The former, the other with a small o, is the imaginary other, the otherness in a mirror image, which makes us dependent upon the form of our counterpart.

  34. #34

    Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.52

    **II** > **Ill** > **1**

    Theoretical move: By shifting the analysis of psychosis from organogenetic/psychogenetic frameworks (both of which covertly presuppose a unifying subject-point) to the register of speech, Lacan establishes the structural distinction between the big Other (the absolute, unknown addressee of speech) and the little other (the object of discourse), and grounds the ego's constitutive alienation in the primacy of the other's desire as the origin of human objects.

    Here she is talking about what is our common object the other, with a small o.

  35. #35

    Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.159

    **X** > **XI** > **1**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that psychosis cannot be adequately explained at the level of the imaginary (projection, narcissism, ideal ego) because alienation is constitutive of the imaginary as such; what distinguishes psychosis is a breakdown at the level of the symbolic order, specifically through Verwerfung (foreclosure), which operates in the field of symbolic articulation that subtends the reality principle — a field Lacan grounds in the primordial symbolic nihilation of reality itself.

    beyond the little other of the imaginary we have to admit the existence of another Other.

  36. #36

    Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.206

    **XIV** > **1**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that psychosis is structured around a failure at the level of the signifier — the exclusion of the big Other — which forces the subject into an imaginary compensation through the "between-I" (inmixing of subjects), explaining the characteristic delusion, mental automatism, and enigmatic assertion of the other's initiative as restitutive responses to the signifier's absence.

    This is where all the between-I phenomena that make up what is apparent in the symptomatology of psychosis take place - at the level of the other subject, of the one who holds the initiative in the delusion.

  37. #37

    Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.65

    **IV** > **"I've just been to the butcher's"**

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses the hallucinatory utterance "Sow!" to demonstrate that in paranoia the big Other is structurally excluded, so the subject's own message circulates between two small others (ego and mirror-counterpart) without ever reaching the dimension of true speech; this is contrasted with the diachronic/synchronic structure of language (Saussure) mapped onto the tripartite symbolic/imaginary/real.

    she receives her own speech from him, but not inverted, her own speech is in the other who is herself, the little other, her reflection in the mirror, her counterpart.

  38. #38

    Seminar III · The Psychoses · Jacques Lacan · p.170

    **X** > **XI** > **1**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the primordial signifier (Wahrnehmungszeichen) is the condition of possibility for memory, historicization, and neurosis, while its foreclosure (Verwerfung) constitutes the distinctive mechanism of psychosis—a "hole in the symbolic" rather than a reworking of reality—thereby reframing Freud's Verneinung and the neurosis/psychosis distinction in strictly signifier-based terms.

    not into alienating himself in the little other, but into becoming this something which, from within the field in which nothing can be said, appeals to all the rest

  39. #39

    Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.387

    XVIII CIRCUITS > 'ME DONNERA SANS FEMME UNE PROGÉNITURE'

    Theoretical move: Lacan recapitulates his trajectory from intersubjective schema (subject/Other/little other) toward discourse and object-as-signifier, then formalises the Oedipus complex and castration complex as interlocking symbolic structures, arguing that the Name-of-the-Father introduces a radical symbolic dimension into the child-mother relation, and that the phobic object functions as a metaphor standing in for this symbolic gap.

    the imaginary other, the little other, plays an intermediary role, that of a screen

  40. #40

    Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.363

    XVIII CIRCUITS > THE MOTHER'S DRAWERS AND THE FATHER'S SHORTCOMING

    Theoretical move: In the Little Hans case, Lacan argues that the phobia's resolution proceeds through stages of "imaginification" — converting an inassimilable real element (Hanna) first into a Platonic reminiscence (always-already-there object) and then into an Ideal/Image — thereby distinguishing this fantasmatic operation from repetition and the re-found object, and showing how the little other (Hanna-as-image) functions as a superior ego enabling Hans's mastery of the castration situation.

    They are essential to the little other who is there across from him. He has her perform what will enable him to start to dominate the situation.

  41. #41

    Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.77

    Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THE SIGNIFIER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT > ON ANALYSIS AS BUNDLING AND THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF

    Theoretical move: Lacan critiques the object-relations school (Marty, Fain, Bouvet) for reducing the analytic situation to a real dyadic relationship aimed at collapsing imaginary distance, thereby foreclosing the symbolic dimension of speech and the Other — and shows that this technical orientation produces paradoxical perverse reactions, particularly in obsessional cases. Against this, he reaffirms that the symbolic (S-A) and imaginary (a-a') axes must be held in their mutual, crossing functioning, with the paternal function and Oedipus complex as the fourth term that re-situates the preoedipal imaginary triad.

    The line a-a' concerns the imaginary relationship, which refers the subject… to the unifying image of the little other, a narcissistic image.

  42. #42

    Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.25

    Jacques Lacan The Object Relation > THEORISING THE LACK OF OBJECT > <span id="page-22-0"></span>THE THREE FORMS OF THE LACK OF OBJECT

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the object relation cannot be theorized without the phallus as a third-party element disrupting any dual (imaginary) subject-object relation, and that the dominant object-relations practice errs by reducing the analytic situation to an imaginary dyad (identification with the analyst's ego), as exemplified by its mishandling of obsessional neurosis.

    He exhibits how far this little other, which is his alter ego, his own double, can go, and does so before an Other who witnesses the spectacle in which he himself is a spectator.

  43. #43

    Seminar IV · The Object Relation · Jacques Lacan · p.426

    FAREWELL > FROM HANS-THE-FETISH TO LEONARDO-IN-THE-MIRROR

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that sublimation is structurally correlated with an inversion of the ego/other relation in the imaginary register, such that the very process of de-subjectification (sublimation) entails a fundamental self-forgetting—illustrated through Leonardo's mirror writing as the symptom of a radical alienation in which the subject addresses himself from the position of his own imaginary other.

    someone who addresses himself and who makes comments to himself from his own imaginary other

  44. #44

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.400

    **THE OBSESSIONAL AND HIS DESIRE**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the "oblative" (altruistic) resolution of obsessional neurosis is itself an obsessional fantasy, and proceeds to map four cardinal points of obsessional desire—centering on the maintenance of the big Other as the locus of signification—before distinguishing "acting out" from the exploit and from fantasy as a message addressed to the analyst that exposes the subject's impasse with demand, desire, and the castration complex.

    the actual other, the other that exists - has absolutely nothing to do with all this dialectic, for the simple reason that the real other is far too preoccupied with his own Other

  45. #45

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.467

    **THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE PHALLUS IN** THE TREATMENT > **EXITING VIA THE SYMPTOM**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the resolution of obsessional and hysterical neurosis hinges on the subject's correct relationship to the phallus as a signifier—not identifying with it but assuming one's place relative to it—and that failures of analytic technique (reducing this to imaginary phallic identification) produce symptomatic persistence rather than cure, with the Freudian formula 'Wo Es war soll Ich werden' pointing toward the properly symbolic realization of desire.

    The distinction between the presence of the Other with a big O and the presence of the other with a little o is tangible in the development of the case

  46. #46

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.352

    **THE DREAM BY THE BUTCHER'S BEAUTIFUL WIFE** > Then Freud makes this parenthesis: > A further parenthetical remark by Freud:

    Theoretical move: By working through the Dora case, Lacan demonstrates how hysteria is structurally defined by the subject's inability to advance beyond demand to desire: the hysteric's identification with the little other (Herr K.) functions as a substitute for the beyond-of-demand constituted by the paternal metaphor, and the collapse of this identification reveals the fundamental interchangeability—and fragility—of the two lines connecting desire and demand in the Graph of Desire.

    the other in the sense of little a, the other in whom she recognizes herself... he is the support of Dora's identification

  47. #47

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.121

    *UNE FEMME DE NON-RECEVOIR,* **OR: A FLAT REFUSAL**

    Theoretical move: By duplicating the Graph of Desire to incorporate the Other as a parallel subject-system, Lacan formalizes the conditions under which a Witz succeeds: the Other must share the same signifying chain (be "of like mind"), and the comic/naive works by evoking a primal lack of inhibition that mirrors the metonymic captivation structuring the joke's mechanism.

    what is demanded of the imaginary other so that, within the goblet that this imaginary other proffers, the symbolic Other understands it.

  48. #48

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.483

    **YOU ARE THE ONE** YOU HATE

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the obsessional's demand for death must be understood as a signifier mediated by the Oedipal horizon rather than reducible to Penisneid or castration, and that the Christian commandment 'love your neighbour as yourself' discloses—when formulated from the locus of the Other—the unconscious circuit in which the subject is the one who hates (demands the death of) itself, converging with Freud's 'Wo Es war, soll Ich werden'.

    The presence of the phallus in the subject's relationship to the image of her semblable, the little other, the image of the body

  49. #49

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.117

    **A BIT-OF-SENSE AND THE STEP-OF-SENSE** > **WHOAH, NEDDY!**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that jokes operate through a shared symbolic field (the "parish"/paroisse) constituted by metonymic stock common to speaker and Other, and that the joke's mechanism works by using the Other-as-censor as a "reflecting concavity" to make the unconscious resonate — the obstacle to meaning becomes the very vehicle for transmitting what cannot ordinarily be heard.

    The little other, to call him by his name, contributes to the possibility of a joke, but it's within the subject's resistance… that something that makes itself heard will resonate much further

  50. #50

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.489

    **EXPLANATION OF THESCHEMAS** > **1 The signifying chain**

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the signifying chain is the irreducible structural condition of human subjectivity, the unconscious, and intersubjectivity alike — and that failing to grasp this leads to technical deviations (e.g. Bouvet's imaginary-centric technique), which Schema L is designed to correct by showing how the vector from the Other to the subject must traverse, not reduce to, the imaginary relation.

    the imaginary relationship, the one that links the ego to the little other

  51. #51

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.303

    **THE GIRL AND THE PHALLUS** > **THE FORMULAS OF DESIRE**

    Theoretical move: The phallus is theorized as the privileged signifier that introduces the relationship to the little other (a) into the big Other (A) as the locus of speech, thereby barring the Other and implicating it in the dialectic of desire — a structural move that critiques Jones's reductive biologism (aphanisis as disappearance of desire) in favour of a properly symbolic account of the castration complex.

    man has a certain relationship with the little other which is structured like what I have just called human desire, in the sense in which this desire is already fundamentally perverse

  52. #52

    Seminar V · Formations of the Unconscious · Jacques Lacan · p.299

    **THE GIRL AND THE PHALLUS** > **THE FORMULAS OF DESIRE**

    Theoretical move: Lacan introduces three formulas of desire (articulating desire's relations to narcissistic identification, demand/the Other, and the phallus as signifier) while arguing that Freud's *Totem and Taboo* discloses the constitutive link between desire and the signifier — specifically that the murder of the father marks the emergence of signifiers from death, and that human desire is irreducible to adaptation because the subject enjoys desiring itself.

    The little a is the little other, the other insofar as he is our semblable.

  53. #53

    Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.229

    THE LAUGHTER OF THE IMMORTAL GODS

    Theoretical move: Lacan formalizes the quadripartite structure of subject-formation by showing that the specular couple [a-a'] is always already regulated by the more primitive dyad of the unconstituted subject and the mother-as-One, and that the birth of metaphor (substitution) is the moment at which the object is symbolized and desire properly emerges — yielding the formula of fantasy ($◇a) inscribed within a four-term schema.

    the couple involving the child and the little other who represents his own image to him [a-a'] becomes juxtaposed to a second relationship

  54. #54

    Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.205

    SACRIFICING THE TABOO QUEEN

    Theoretical move: Lacan reappropriates Jones's term "aphanisis" — redirecting it from a fear of desire's disappearance rooted in developmental psychology toward a structurally prior effect of castration, arguing that it is precisely because the signifier is operative in castration that the subject can become alarmed at the potential disappearance of his desire; this allows Lacan to reframe the clinical material of Ella Sharpe's patient in terms of intersubjective topology rather than imaginary equivalences.

    In psychoanalysis, the places of the subject, the little other, and the Other with a capital O must always be indicated for each phenomenon if we wish to avoid getting bogged down in a sort of tangle

  55. #55

    Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.182

    THE FANTASY ABOUT THE BARKING DOG > Crossing and exchange

    Theoretical move: Lacan demonstrates how the fantasy formula ($◇a) operates clinically by tracking a patient's chain of associations through the Graph of Desire, showing that the subject's fantasy structure requires the absence of the big Other as witness, and that the oscillation between the imaginary other (little a) and the symbolic Other is the pivotal hinge around which the subject's desire and shame are organized.

    We have here an oscillation [or: game, jeu] between two figures of the other - the one who does not speak and that we imagine, and the one to whom we are going to speak.

  56. #56

    Seminar VI · Desire and Its Interpretation · Jacques Lacan · p.185

    THE IMAGE OF THE INSIDE-OUT GLOVE

    Theoretical move: The passage uses the Graph of Desire to theorize the structural asymmetry between fantasy and dream: in fantasy the subject (barred, announcing itself as other) is foregrounded while the object remains enigmatic, whereas in the dream the object is foregrounded and the subject remains unknown — thereby elaborating the formula ($◇a) as a mobile, two-sided structure where desire arises in the gap between need and demand.

    The ego, which is constituted in a certain imaginary relationship to the other, the little other, then finds itself caught up in the Other's discourse.

  57. #57

    Seminar VII · The Ethics of Psychoanalysis · Jacques Lacan · p.238

    **XIV** > The function of the good

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the domain of the good is not reducible to utilitarian use-value but is fundamentally structured by power—the capacity to deprive others—which erects the first barrier against desire; jouissance introduces a surplus that splits the good from mere utility, and the depriving agent is revealed to be an imaginary function (the little other), not a real one.

    The depriving agent is an imaginary function. It is the little other, one's fellow man, he who is given in the relationship that is half rooted in naturalness of the mirror stage.

  58. #58

    Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.197

    **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **THE OBJECT OF DESIRE A N D THE DIALECTIC OF CASTRATION** > <span id="page-192-0"></span>**A CRITIQUE OF CO UNTERTRANSFERENCE**

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the unconscious is first encountered as the Other's unconscious, which reframes the countertransference debate: analytic apathy is not grounded in the analyst's thorough self-analysis (reduction of unconscious blind spots) but in the analyst being possessed by a desire stronger than other desires—a transformed economy of desire specific to the analytic position.

    the other with a lowercase o, the imaginary other, outside of himself ... the path of Stoic apathy demands that we remain unmoved by the attempts at seduction ... by this other with a lowercase o found outside of us

  59. #59

    Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.161

    **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > *ÂGALMA*

    Theoretical move: Lacan defines the psychoanalytic object as *àgalma* — the partial object of desire that is incommensurable with ordinary objects of equivalence — and argues that this object, not identificatory or metaphysical constructs, is the true pivot of love, desire, and analytic practice, requiring a strict topology of subject, little other, and big Other to be properly situated.

    I will try next time to situate this object in the threefold topology of the subject, the other with a lowercase o, and the Other with a capital O

  60. #60

    Seminar VIII · Transference · Jacques Lacan · p.200

    **M EDICAL H A R M O N Y** > **THE OBJECT OF DESIRE A N D THE DIALECTIC OF CASTRATION** > <span id="page-192-0"></span>**A CRITIQUE OF CO UNTERTRANSFERENCE**

    Theoretical move: Lacan critiques the Kleinian theory of countertransference by showing that what analysts call "countertransference" — the analyst's feelings determined by the analysand — is not an incidental imperfection but a structural feature that must be theorized through the Graph of Desire (especially the relation between demand, the Other, and the superego), not simply attributed to projection of the "bad object."

    the other with a lowercase o [a for autre in French], by which he is in a specular relationship with himself, insofar as he is constituted as an ego

  61. #61

    Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.25

    *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 3*: *Wednesday 29 November 1961*

    Theoretical move: Lacan uses phonetics (the silent P between implosion and explosion), animal communication, baby-talk, pidgin, and cross-species identification to clear the ground for a theory of the signifier and the function of the One — arguing that what specifies a tongue is not simply speech but a differential structure of presence/absence, and that identification (not pre-logical participation) is the fundamental phenomenon underlying the human subject's relation to language and the Other.

    the concrete distinction here between the other and the Other, all we can do is go through this experience

  62. #62

    Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.22

    *Seminar 2: Wednesday 22 November 1961* > *Seminar 3*: *Wednesday 29 November 1961*

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the single trait (*einziger Zug*) is the minimal signifying mark through which the subject's identification is suspended, and uses the contrast between animal speech (access only to the little other) and human speech (access to the big Other) to demonstrate that the constitutive feature of human language is not mere phonatory emission but the structural locus of the Other as the place of the signifying chain.

    It is precisely this which is lacking to my dog: for her there is only the small other.

  63. #63

    Seminar IX · Identification · Jacques Lacan · p.3

    *Seminar 1: Wednesday 15 November 1961*

    Theoretical move: Lacan opens Seminar IX by arguing that identification must be approached not through the imaginary relation to the other but through the logical problem of identity (A = A), and that the subject is constituted not by any self-present cogito but solely through the existence of the signifier and its effects — a thesis which frames the entire year's inquiry.

    the door is easily opened for me to put the accent, to insist on this difference between the other and the Other, between the small other and the big Other.

  64. #64

    The Triumph of Religion · Jacques Lacan · p.40

    II. Can Psychoanalysis Constitute the Kind of Ethics Necessitated by our Times?

    Theoretical move: Lacan argues that Freud's investigation of narcissism and the mirror stage reveals that self-love is always love of an imaginary other, and that the unconscious—structured like language—marks the place where the subject is split from the Thing (Das Ding), making any ethics grounded in ego-psychology or object relations insufficient for the demands of scientific modernity.

    I merely love an other, an other [autre] with a lowercase initial o, hence my students' use of the term 'little other.'

  65. #65

    Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan · Richard Boothby · p.246

    <span class="chnum ordinal">Chapter 5 </span><span id="ch5.xhtml_p241" class="pagebreak" aria-label=" page 241. " role="doc-pagebreak"></span>Figurations of the *Objet a* > The Object-Cause of Desire

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that the *objet petit a* is the "object-cause" of desire: a primordially lost, liminal object that is simultaneously imaginary, symbolic, and real yet belongs to none, and whose retroactive ceding—not subtraction from a pre-formed subject—constitutes the desiring subject itself, such that desire paradoxically originates only in and through the loss of its object.

    not the little other of the imaginary object, the mirror image of the other human being, but the unknowable, unmasterable, and monstrous big Other.

  66. #66

    The Odd One In: On Comedy · Alenka Zupančič · p.118

    Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite > And a little further on:

    Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that in Marivaux's comedy, access to the Real is achieved not by stripping away symbolic fiction but by *redoubling* it — a "dialectical" move whereby the doubling of the imaginary mirror-turn produces an inner, minimal difference constitutive of the Symbolic, opening a space for the Other as immanent to the situation rather than as its outer horizon.

    the Other is tested as to what sort of rearrangements of the 'small others' it still endures.

  67. #67

    The Odd One In: On Comedy · Alenka Zupančič · p.103

    Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite > And a little further on:

    Theoretical move: Zupančič argues that comic trust (and transference) operates not through knowledge but through a credit extended precisely at the point of the Other's lack, and that the comic suspension of the big Other (as in comedies of mistaken identity) produces a surplus object — "error incorporated" — as a little other that takes the Other's place, revealing that comedy proper pivots not on the Other's failure itself but on the surplus effects that failure generates.

    the suspension of the symbolic Other coincides with the surprising appearance of a (small) other: in the form of a double or in the form of a surplus comic object.

  68. #68

    The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance · Bruce Fink · p.104

    <span id="page-101-0"></span>Object (a): Cause of Desire > *Imaginary Objects, Imaginary Relations*

    Theoretical move: The passage traces Lacan's early theorisation of the ego as imaginary object (*a*), showing how imaginary relations (love/identification and hate/rivalry) operate through the logic of same/different, and contrasts this with the later emergence of the real object cause of desire (objet petit a), while situating countertransference as an inescapably imaginary phenomenon that the analyst must set aside.

    Lacan refers to it in the early 1950s as an other (*autre* in French), hence his abbreviation *a* for the ego, which is usually italicized, indicating (in accordance with Lacan's general typographical conventions) that it is imaginary.

  69. #69

    The Odd One In: On Comedy (alt. ed.) · Alenka Zupančič · p.103

    Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite > And a little further on:

    Theoretical move: The passage argues that comic naivety (trust in the Other's metonymic object despite its inconsistency) is not mere ignorance but a structural wager on the lack-in-the-Other, and that comedies of mistaken identity function by suspending the symbolic Other, generating a surplus comic object ('error incorporated') that displaces the emphasis from the Other's failure to the productive accidents that failure enables.

    the suspension of the symbolic Other coincides with the surprising appearance of a (small) other: in the form of a double or in the form of a surplus comic object

  70. #70

    The Odd One In: On Comedy (alt. ed.) · Alenka Zupančič · p.118

    Physics of the Infinite against Metaphysics of the Finite > And a little further on:

    Theoretical move: Zupančič argues, through Marivaux's comic dramaturgy, that access to the Real is achieved not by stripping away symbolic fiction but by *redoubling* it: a second mask/fiction produces an internal difference that constitutes the Symbolic as immanent to the situation, distinguishing this comic logic from both romantic immediacy and carnivalesque transgression.

    the Other is tested as to what sort of rearrangements of the 'small others' it still endures.

  71. #71

    Theory Keywords · Various · p.44

    **Interpellation** > **Little Other**

    Theoretical move: The passage works through four related concepts—the little other as site of quasi-traumatic subjectivity-formation, the lost object as the structural condition of desire and enjoyment, phallic jouissance as the masculine structure of constitutive dissatisfaction, masochism as sadistic reversal, and the master signifier as the empty signifier that initiates the symbolic order and organizes enjoyment through exclusion—demonstrating that lack, loss, and emptiness are not failures of the system but its generative engine.

    The little other is the locus of a disturbing mystery. Lacan's thesis is that the foundation of subjectivity is established in a complicated reaction to a quasi-traumatic encounter with the little other.